17 January 2026 – It seems rude to mention sunshine, let alone mild temperatures (9C), when most of Canada is socked with snow, sleet, ice and windstorms. But… here it is. A bright, friendly day.

So we seize it.

We’re off to Burnaby Lake Regional Park. The park surrounds a large glacial lake to the east of Vancouver, and lies within its own dense municipality. Yet it is also home to wildlife (especially birds) and rich with trails for human visitors (walk, cycle, ride a horse, as you wish).

We have no particular plan beyond entering the park at the east end, off Cariboo Rd., and following the Brunette River upstream to the lake. After that? We’ll find out.

It is all magic, right from the get-go.

A great blue heron sits tall, still and stately in his tree beside the river…

winter moss glows incandescent on trees lining the river…

and a snake fence leads us on upstream…

to the Cariboo Dam. Several creeks and a lake feed into Burnaby Lake, which in turn empties into the Brunette River and ultimately into the Fraser. This dam controls the outflow.

An era of sawmills on the lake caused the inevitable toxicity and devastation of salmon and other populations. We stand on the path atop the dam, and see some results of rehab efforts since then.

To the east, the Cariboo Dam Fishway provides upstream access for resurgent fish populations …

and to the west, winter trees cast their delicate embroidery on the system’s much-improved waters.

Trails circle and loop off-shoots all around the lake, but are not always in sight of water. We’re on the Brunette Headwaters Trail, entranced by nature’s response to the minimal human pruning that keeps trails safe and accessible.

Humans cut; nature pretties up the resulting stumps and fallen logs.

Sometimes with cream/black/ochre fungi…

and sometimes with a smacking great burst of red and orange in the wood itself.

(Really! No enhancements.)

And then, as if that weren’t enough, right there in the grasses between stump and tree trunk…

I spy a vivid little slice of off-cut. Which, to my friend’s amusement, I tuck into my knapsack.

On west we go, and turn onto the path that will take us to the viewpoint at the end of Piper Spit.

The waters along this path teem with happy ducks. Even my uneducated eye can pick out mallards, pintails, golden-eye and coots, as they mill about.

In the trees, chickadees and red-wing blackbirds.

I confess: I deny these guys are red-wingers until they flash those chevrons. “Well, they don’t sound like red-wing blackbirds,” I grumble. Then I have to consider that this lot is a long way from the lot that my ear knows best, back in Ontario, and they probably have their own distinctive accent. (Am I right? Am I silly? Somebody please tell me.)

Tip of Piper Spit, we look east at yet more ducks (and gulls, and bird boxes along the shore)…

then west across mud flats toward the shoreline viewing tower.

Back to the main trail, and up the tower…

for a long view across grasses, lake and woods beyond, right to the towers of downtown Burnaby.

Beyond those towers, the Vancouver towers.

Where, once home…

I settle my vivid little off-cut among its new companions.